You can't. And that's the point. If you can't prove or disprove something; if you cant test something, then it's not science. It's irrelevant to science. It's not science's job to test something that's logically untestable.

Who cares whether or not there's an unprovable Being making sure that gravity on earth accelerates objects at 9.8m^2? What we know is that so far gravity on earth has been consistent. That we can test; that we can use. We learn the rules of the game and exploit it to make our lives easier.

Astrology by itself isn't harmful. It's a tool that controls people; like religion. And like religion, it's not a transparent system. It will lead to real harmful effects.

Humans are humans after all. If a transparent system of control can be corrupted, what more of a system without transparency?

Here's a quote from Jonathan Hickman's Pax Romana on religion as a method of control:

"Religion hides evil behind a veil of righteousness. It attacks legitimate questions by simply calling them immoral. [...] It's worse than that. Religion feeds off of than within us which cries out to understand our place in the universe, but crushes spirituality under false rules and demands acceptable behavior."

I know people will hate me for saying this, but in a way, it's better if everyone sees practically the same movie. If we're all seeing slightly different views, then we won't all have quite the same experience. I think there's something to be said for having a particular view of the scene intended by the director.

It just adds another dimension that directors can explore. What they'll release will still be what they intended, just like any other artist on any other medium.

Imagine what this new dimension could add to a "film". Depending on one's POV, one can get a different insight and experience. Talk about an opportunity for almost unlimited replayability.

It doesn't change the past leaks, no. But it does question the leadership of Wikileaks and its future. If he's convicted, there'll be a need for a new figurehead; if he's acquitted on the other hand, well... let's just say it might not be wise to have a man suspected of rape and harassment to be handling leaks.

One more advantage that PCs have over consoles is that a high end PC hardware can be vastly more superior to the consoles. Even if the console players use a mouse and a keyboard to play their games, I believe that generally PC players would still be better.

From my own experiences playing FPS games, the difference between a PC that could run a game at 300++ frames per second over one that runs it at 100 frames per second is... night and day. I can't quite explain why but it's there.

Anyways, PC gamers also have access to settings that console gamers don't have. This allows PC gamers to see more by running the game at a higher resolution, increasing their FOV, removing the HUD and/or gun models, etc. It's also far more common for PC players to use a headphone that practically pinpoints to them where his/her targets are.

These small customizations and advantages quickly add up; which in competitive settings, makes a world of difference.

As one who lives in Southeast Asia, I'd like to share my own 2 cents here.

The general indie film's target market here at least belong to the upper middle-income class. They comprise of slightly less than 4% of the total population in the Philippines. (See, the income inequality here is so high that those in the lower middle-income bracket worry about going hungry still.) And considering that indie films aren't marketed extensively, your left with a really very very small market.

It's tough but hey, that's the indie game. Now, you'd also have to understand that the people who buy pirated stuffs here usually don't belong to the indie market. Would the folks who pirated your film ever watch it in the theaters? Hell no. It's not a blockbuster film that everybody else would be talking about for the next three weeks. They'd rather save that money for food.

The good news here is that the people that are able and willing to spend money to see indie films, will, given the opportunity to do so. The bad news is since distributors snubs the small but dedicated market they have here, they're forced to watch the film through other means - be it legal or not. Hell, I know a lot of people here who pays extra for shipping just to watch indie flicks.

So... You don't like Ubisoft's DRM but since you really really like AC2, you wait for a crack then still buy the game?

Look it's your money and everything so you're free to use it however you want, but to me buying their game whilst hating their DRM is very short sighted and counter-intuitive. If the current DRM-Crack arms war continues to escalate, I fear we'll just end up with a subscription model or something so draconian that pirates might just not be able to crack. You might be able to play Assassin's Creed 2 for now; but come Assassin's Creed 3, we'll all be fucked.

I'd rather we just all stop buying Ubisoft's product now, even if that means we won't be playing their latest games, and hope that they shape up. Send a clear message to them that they're going to lose their customers and sales unless they remove their fucking DRM.

Indeed you can't but I'm afraid you missed Jurily's main insight: "the [game] you pay for is better than the one you get for free." That doesn't mean moving/locking parts of the game to your servers; once it's been cracked (and it really only takes one), pirates gets the better copy than legit owners. (Let's not even mention how cumbersome all this is.) No, what you should focus on is making your legit buyer's experience better than the pirated version.

How? Well I don't have all the answers but I believe Stardock might have the right ideas: involve yourselves with your community; be part of custom content distribution; and continued game support through patches (bug fixes, new features, and new content). For multiplayer games, have a hand on the internet match making service to limit and weed out trouble players. Limit all those services only to your legit owners and pirates looking in would feel nothing but jealousy and inferiority.

In the non-software part of the world, it's no different - fake Nike shoes or Rolex watches are crap next to the real ones. Those who buy the fake ones wouldn't have likely bought the real ones anyways; moreover, the fakes make legit owners feel better and justified about their purchase. Likewise, I could see how pirated copies on the net would promote the game for free that could very well lead to increased sales!

"The OS will only use memory for cache when there is no other demand for that memory"

Ok, I'm not going to bother and read the smart people. I'm going to go straight to my point.

If you are using nearly all available RAM for disk cache, then EVERY REQUEST FOR RAM WILL REQUIRE CACHE DUMP.

It's like this;

If you have 4GB RAM and are using, say, 1.5GB for applications and system, and you use 2.2GB RAM for cache, then you are left with 300MB approx for any new demand. So any demand in excess is going to make your system dump cache, and it does take time. How much is an interesting discussion. And yes, we can consider if the request is going to be satisfied out of cache, but let's also assume if it is than that cache will not be dumped. That would be unfortunate.

Here's my beef with this much more aggressive caching in 7 v XP:

What the ^&)$ do you need 2.5G cache for?

What are the likely demands on caching? Office 2007? My XP machine at work rarely shows Office 07 components using more than 500MB RAM. 2G caching? Pagefile getting you down, you don't want to use that?

More to the point, how often would a real-world user be USING 2GB RAM, much less 4GB?

Well, I do. But real-world? I have 2-4 virtual machines running fairly often, and in XP I rarely get up to 3GB. Win7 would maybe get me into 4GB+, sure, and the pagefile would go crazy.

When Smartdrive first came out, we used to tune it down quite a bit to avoid hogging RAM. I know it's improved, and I've never worried about it since Win98, but the more I read about Win7's caching, the more I think it is there for some strategy here that has nothing to do with user demands, and everything to do with OS performance. Vista and 7 both cannot be descirbed as lightweight, so maybe this is really to keep the OS light on its feet.

Users have the mindset that file formats are proprietary and belong to specific programs.

How about:

Users have the mindset that their documents are somehow stored "inside" the program. Consider a conversation I had recently about a customer that needed a newer office suite, but didn't like the Office 2K7 ribbon:

Me: Ok...so we'll uninstall Office 97, and install OpenOffice instead. It's free.Them: But all my documents are in Word.Me: Yes. OpenOffice will handle them just fine.Them: But all my documents are stored in Word. If you take Word off my computer, how will I get my documents?Me: Just use the File->Open menu in OpenOffice, and load the file.Them: [blank stare]Me: The documents are still on your computer, you'll just load them in a different program.Them: But...[weakly]..all my documents are in Word.

They honestly thought that Word was somehow this black box thing that "contained" all their documents, and gave them the ability to edit them at the same time. They were absolutely convinced that removing Word from their computer would take all their documents with it.

The Vasa was wooden, and I don't know how much of its metal survived. However, the Mary Rose (I think) ship dates to the 1600, and was preserved too (I don't remember how much of its iron content survived, but wood survived very well - including some longbows).
As a side note, I had recovered shiny nails from a bed of degraded leafs fallen into a well (the nails rusted quickly when exposed to air, though).

Depends on your idea of successful I guess, they are selling, but the installed base of n95's shits all over that of the iphone. Worldwide the iphone has only sold 30 million units, that's just a drop in the bucket really.